


external extinction

by ang3lba3



Category: Homestuck
Genre: ...sorta?, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, bloodswap, classpect, god AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 09:04:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14305347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang3lba3/pseuds/ang3lba3
Summary: If problems persist, please exit to the main menu and restart.





	external extinction

**Author's Note:**

> so....this is a relaly weird little piece. i've been really sick lately, but i gave it my best shot. i had a lot of thoughts that i wasn't able to express - mainly that more than one fuschia troll is born per generation but only one is chosen to be heir and the others are hunted and killed, usually upon birth. karkat, much like in original flavor homestuck, got "lucky" and is a mutant chilling around on alternia hiding from the Authorities.
> 
> if you want, comment with questions, and i'll make up some completely impromptu bullshit to justify my fevered writing

"It's your lucky day biotch," says the pale monstrosity standing over your head. You shriek and flail out wildly, missing by a mile despite how close it is. "Jegus, calm down. You're not a looker yourself."

  
"WHOMST THE FUCK-"

"You've been chosen for this limited time opportunity, one time guaranteed life changing opportunity with no warranty, my bro."

You stare at the tile floor and hope you can make the last forty seconds disappear as the word 'chosen' starts to sink through your thick fucking skull. This isn't supposed to happen, not to you. You're supposed to huddle in a hole and pretend that you're not a fushcia freak of nature, a copy born at the same time as the expected Heir of Alternia, a mistake that if ever found would be wiped out.

"Ready to be god, freak?"

You're so goddamn screwed.

-

"When you found out you were going to be chosen..." it's still hard to look at him. You can't get over how wrong he is. A god, with petal thin skin and blue veins that bleed red, dark plastic shades that make his cheeks only look more hollow, his bone structure more fragile. Without them he looks naked, and you're not sure that's better. Every inch of him is so exposed and functionally useless it makes you itch with pity and hate simultaneously.

"Wasn't no 'going to be' about it. I was already chosen. I came out of the womb kicking, my dude. Born ready, if you will." Dave examines his claws, rounded transparent things that you've seen crack in half with no provocation. The part is very much so representative of the whole. He punched you in the face the other day during sparring practice and fractured three goddamn knuckles. "My dad was chosen, my mom too. It was gonna happen to me."

"If it was that predictable, how were you not all killed?" you ask, swallowing your disgust at the thought of mammals and their livebirths and gestational periods and ew ew ew EW no wonder he was so fragile his species was an affront to the natural order of things.

"We were," Dave said, face shadowing over. "In case you forgot."

You don't know what the right thing is to say to that. You've never been good at saying the right thing.

"C'mon. Didn't travel this far through time to talk about me, I'm here to hold your hand through being the first god-knight in millenia. Let's get our swordfighting on, yeah?"

-

"Are you...serious?" Dave asks, and you grunt from where you're straining to lift the rapier. "Dude. My dude. Do you have an iron deficiency. Have you eaten today."

"It's like - I know you fucking glued it down or something this isn't cool Dave!" you snap, with one last heave. You fall flat on your ass, exoskeleton scraping along the handle with a shriek as you move and the sword doesn't.

Dave looks at you critically, and then the rapier. "Did you ever have trouble picking up weaponry before?"

"Of fucking course not, how do you think I lived this long bulgelick?" your heart isn't in the insult. Your heart is slowly bleeding itself to death thinking about the future of a troll who can't lift a weapon and can't aim fists or feet for shit. "I used sickles."

Dave sits beside you and stares at the rapier, head tilted quizzically. 

"Don't you have an afterlife to get to or something? The extinction of your species to try and prevent?" you snarl. It's nasty. You don't care. Humans died because they were weak, and Dave showed up in your life and now you're weak too. Not in the normal quadrant confusion crush way that you definitely are as well, but quite literally weak. You're supposed to be a god and you can't lift a sword. 

"Don't be a wiggler, Karkat. Papa D Stride's tryin' to think," Dave rubs a hand through his hair, and you're shocked to see that it's actually capable of movement in response to mere human strength. It seems incongruous when compared to the amount of gel and hairspray poured in.  
He tries to think for so long that you stand up and leave. He's a fucking Knight of time with an alien lifespan tacked onto that of a God's, you could be waiting until you died for him to finish the thought full of incomprehensible human slang. 

-

You realize that since he can time travel, you having to wait any length of time at all is what the kids today like to call "ludicrous". 

When you bring this up to him, Dave glances at you, grins blinding and frustrating and shit eating, and you don't see him for three days. 

At which point, he is still 'thinking', and had last seen you three seconds ago.

-

"So here's what happened," Dave says, and you shriek. It's been so long since he's spoken to you that you forgot how grating and startling his voice was. It's high and nasal, missing some kind of innate bass that you've always taken for granted. "Jegus, Karkat, keep it together. Here's what happened."

When he's finished talking, it makes sense. Of course you're some kind of mixed breed freak of a god. You're a mixed breed freak of a troll, after all. 

"So... I'm not a Knight of Time."

"Nope. Life, just like every other troll in your caste." Dave rubs his forehead and mutters something to himself about how much he misses 'Google'. He picks the weirdest time to talk about his exes. It's borderline infuriating that he can break this news to you and be thinking about anyone else.

"And your solution is..."

"Well," Dave says, and eyes you. He looks wary. "How close are you with the current Life goddesses?"

"How close are you to a functioning species?" you retort, panic mounting. "If they know I exist they will KILL me."

Dave shrugs. "Here's the thing though like. I'm not sure...they can. I control time, but only my own time unless I want to be drained for weeks. You can't kill anything, you can't even hit anything lately. And I can't hurt you, I get ridiculously injured if I try. Even if I try indirectly, like by putting a tripwire in front of the stairs."

"If you what-"

"The point is!" Dave continues hastily, "You might be indestructible."

"I accidentally gave myself a black eye last night because my sopor levels were too low and I was punching shit in my sleep," you say flatly. "I'm not indestructible."

"You are in ultimate control of your own life and well being, and of no one else's." Dave stands. "Well. My work is done here. Don't freak if someone comes after you, it's impossible for them to hurt you as long as you remember that it's impossible for you to hurt them. If you try and hurt them, you will absolutely hurt yourself in the process."

"You're leaving?" you ask, heart jumping in your throat, body jumping to your feet. "What the fuck, Dave?"

"Um. Yeah? What did you think was gonna happen when I finished teaching you how to be a god?"

"I have 'anger management issues' and 'live on the most violent planet in the known universe' and can't hit anything how can you leave me here."

"I can't take you home!" Dave snaps, and his face is turning red, the way his hand had the one time he stuck it out the window during the daytime for too long. He said that he'd needed more vitamin D. You still have no idea what the fuck a vitamin is. 

"You're facing extinction from some random ass event you haven't specified but could probably be sneezing too hard based on your general constitution-"

"I'm not getting enough vitamins here, douchebag-"

"NO ONE KNOWS WHAT A VITAMIN IS DAVE, and I'm literally indestructible! Just take me back and stick me in front of whatever the threat is."

"The threat IS you!" Dave bursts out, and the emotion is so clear in his voice that you realize it wasn't that his voice was nasal and grating that drove you crazy before. It was that it was nasal and grating and emotionless, impossible to read, forced chill through anything. "Alternia destroys my planet. If you stop that, I don't know what will happen. It could tear reality apart. It could kill you, kill your entire fucking planet as you know it. Do you want that?"

"Dave. We conquer a planet approximately every two minutes, and you're worried that your shitty planet is so important to the universal timeline that everything will just explode if we don't get it."

"Don't be an asshole."

"Impossible." you pull out your phone and tap open trollnet. "I didn't want to trollgle your planet, it seemed insensitive-"

"Trollgle oh my god do you shove your species name on everything you mak-"

"But I did anyways like a week ago. I thought it would hurt your feelings if I told you, but." you clear your throat. "It was destroyed as part of a gameshow."

"A."

"Yeah, it's... yeah." this is an excruciatingly uncomfortable moment.

"Gameshow."

"Mhm." you were so right to not tell him before. 

"I'm gonna be sick," Dave declares, and then proceeds to be sick all over your floor. It's probably the most disgusting thing you've ever seen. You catch his shades before they fall off his face and feel useless as you watch him. When he's done, he shakes, staring blankly at the ground. 

You sit next to him, carefully avoiding the sick. "Are you...okay?"

"No," he says, hoarsely.

Pity. How the fuck could this ever be black when it's so pale right now?

"A motherfucker could use a hug, honestly," he says, and there's that twinge to his voice that lets you know that he's joking and quoting some obscure human thing, but you reach out and hug him anyways. 

"You're pathetic," you inform him, voice catching as he melts into the hug. He presses his face into your neck and it's like he was made to fit there. 

"You're a surprisingly good hugger for a member of a psychopathic race that destroys planets for reality tv."

"That's all we do in reality, what else would we put on reality tv." you can barely form words. His lips move on your gills when he talks and you feel like you're burning to death. Red.

"Come home with me," he says, and a purr starts in your chest, completely without your permission. You'd asked out of desperation and impulse, not because you thought he'd actually -

"I knew you couldn't live without m-"

"Don't even try and finish that fucking sentence you dumbass, I can both hear and feel you purring. It's like a fucking chainsaw in your chest. And you asked me first."

" _Details_."

 


End file.
